Designed for our client, Yellow Door Developments, this new community provides much needed rental housing solutions to the Greater Edmonton Area.
The development was approved under a municipal strategy that aims to create 2,500 new or renovated affordable housing units across the city.
Citadel Affordable Housing
Citadel is an affordable living project serving the Edmonton community. It has gone though the building permitting phases and well under construction, with some buildings occupied. Q4A worked closely with our client to help with the application for the Affordable Housing Investment Program (AHIP).
This program is a comprehensive municipal strategy that aims to create 2,500 new or renovated affordable housing units across Edmonton. To help meet this goal, the Affordable Housing Investment Program provides limited grant funding, to eligible non-profit and private sector entities to encourage affordable housing development in the city.
Q4A leveraged our extensive experience as multi-unit and single-family home designers to vision the site as one that gave a sense of community and ‘home’, with the affordability goal not apparent in the exterior design, avoiding stigmatization or any lack of community intergeneration.
Accessibility was major focus for the design strategy, and several of the units provide ground floor access to accommodate those with mobility and other challenges. We designed Citadel with dignity and a strong desire to integrate lifestyle requirements into the project without making them the defining characteristics of the facades.
This was a unique site as although part of an existing residential enclave, primarily with single family homes, the site itself was a blank canvas for creative solutions that met the requirements and parameters set by city guidelines. These programmatic requirements had to fuse with our client’s goal of creating an affordable solution that had dignity and a sense of home.
With an open vision for developing the design concept, Q4A’s Calgary studio collaborated with our other offices to bring the best of lessons learned to achieve a module-based building program that would be efficient for the yield requirements the site required to be viable.
The final design incorporates 50% garaged, ground floor accessible units with massing intentionally designed to reflect the look, feel and context of a low-rise community, despite the three-storeys required to achieve the necessary density.
The aesthetic is inspired as a modern farmhouse style, with roof slopes that plane down to read as two-story home, similar to the conventions in the neighborhood.
Q4A led a value engineering exercise to keep this design intent, despite the reality of constructing of an affordable living community, this led to minor facade changes that drove construction cost reductions that allowed the site to progress to its current state with partial occupancy.
The comfort of the residents was the main focus of the design strategy for the 119 units. The suites maximize their use and sense of space, with most featuring large windows on both sides, two-storey layouts, and individual private entrances. Additionally, the mechanical room has a separate, independent ground-level access for greater tenant privacy.
The Citadel Affordable Housing project demonstrates our driving philosophy that beyond where people live, our work becomes communities where people thrive.
